Lexi's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lolsome-o-sis girl
Summary: After reading Lewis Carroll's classic tale to her son, Lexi finds herself following a familiar rabbit into her own version of Wonderland, where nothing is quite like the Carrollisms we all know. MULTICHAPTER.
1. Into The Lift

**Lexi's Adventures in Wonderland**

_Fandom: Wizards Vs Aliens_

_Rating: K+_

_Genre: Humor_

_Pairing: Sparse mentions of Tom/Lexi__ throughout_

_Summary:__After reading Lewis Carroll's__ classic__tale__ to her son, Lexi finds herself following a familiar rabbit into her own version of Wonderland, where nothing is quite like the Carrollism__s__ we all know. MULTICHAPTER._

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**AN: Wizards Vs Aliens...Wonderland...two of my favourite things rolled into one! I decided to write this for a bit of fun, incorporating the WvA characters into the Alice crew - I hope you enjoy Lexi's journey to Wonderland as much as I'm enjoying it!**

**If you can guess which characters will play which parts in Lexi's version of Wonderland, you get three virtual cookies and twenty fandom points :)**

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**DISCLAIMER. I do not own Wizards Vs Aliens or any forms of the Alice In Wonderland story.**

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"_Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days._" Lexi closed the book in her lap with a snap and a soft smile. "The End."

"But, Mum!" Benny Junior pulled the blankets down from his face in protest. "That can't be the end of the story! What happens to Alice? Does she grow up and entertain other children with her stories? What about the creatures in Wonderland? The Mad Hatter and the March Hare, and the White Rabbit? What happens to them?"

"Oh..." Lexi smoothed out the creases in her skirt, picking absentmindedly at the fraying edge of the material. "I expect they're still drinking tea in little Alice's mind. Along with all her madness and her other whimsical ideas."

Benny let out a sigh. "That means that they don't exist." He snuggled deeper into his pillow, arms tight and secure around a limp, raggedy teddy bear he had become attached to. "I wish Wonderland existed. Do you wish it did, Mum?"

"Why, of course it exists, Benny." Lexi ruffled his long hair. "Wonderland, and all it's inhabitants, live up in here." She gently tapped his temple with her finger. "They live in your imagination. And your imagination is very real. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, alright?" She dropped a kiss on the place where her finger had been. "Now, get some sleep. It's school in the morning, yes?" She reached over to his bedside table, and switched out the small lamp as she rose from her seat on the bed.

"Goodnight, Mum."

Lexi smiled back as she backed out of the room. "Goodnight...my beautiful boy." She let the door swing shut with a gentle click, and stayed looking at it for several seconds, as if she could see through it and watch her son drifting off into the blissful world of dreams, before running a hand through her hair and forcing herself to move away from the spot where her feet seemed to be rooted, proceeding to go through to the kitchen, where the promise of a warm cup of tea was waiting for her. That was the thing about the evenings she was spending as a human. They were so lonely, spent on her own, wandering around her small flat with no one except herself to talk to. She hadn't made very much progress with any of her neighbours; they thought her strange, peculiar - they thought her as mad as Alice, as a matter of fact. As mad as the Hatter, the March Hare, _and _Alice, rolled into one.

She settled herself on the sofa with a sigh, placing the tattered _Wonderland_ book on the small coffee table, pulling her skirt over her knees and wrapping her fingers around the ceramic mug. Maybe, in a way, those neighbours around her were right. She wasn't exactly a normal human, was she? However much she tried to pretend, no matter how carefully constructed her façade was, there would always be a part of her that was profoundly Nekross, a part that frowned at human behaviour and questioned it because it was unfamiliar to her. How on earth would she ever cope if a place like Wonderland existed outside of Lewis Carroll's little fairy story?

_If I had a world of my own_, she thought, sipping her drink, laying back against the sofa cushion, _everything would be utterly __nonsensical__. I bet things would float up towards the ceiling, because gravity wouldn't work there, and there would be trees that grew inanimate human objects, like pencils and printing machines - ridiculous things like that. You can't grow printing machines..._

Her thoughts continued along this tangent for a while, during which time she must have dozed off, because, before she knew it, the little living room was in darkness and her mug of cold tea was resting on the coffee table beside her book. She rubbed her eyes, trying to get the tiredness out of them, and was about to close them again, when a scratching sound at the door caught her ears, making her sit bolt upright on the sofa. It was the like a small animal was trying to get inside the flat - a cat, perhaps?

Curious, she swung her legs over the side of the sofa and stood up, wincing at the slight ache in her muscles as she made her way to the front door. After wrestling with the faulty lock for a few minutes, she pushed the door open, peering out into the darkened hallway. Nothing. No sign of life anywhere.

She was about to pass it off as something that her mind, fogged with sleep, had come up with, when there was a flash of something darting down one of the staircases that led up to her floor. It looked too big to be a cat.

Was it one of her unsociable neighbours, playing some sort of trick?

Straightening her shoulders, she let the door close softly behind her and set off down the hall at a brisk walk, determined to get to the bottom of this - whatever_ this_ was.

"Oh, dear, dear, dear! Too late, I shall be!" The oddly familiar voice wailed in its high-pitched squeal, as its owner disappeared into one of the more-often-than-not-out-of-use lifts that the high rise tower block provided its residents with, Lexi following straight after it. The number of the floor was still lit up on the keypad. Floor thirteen.

_How ironic_, Lexi thought, stepping into the other lift, trying to keep a brave face on. If it _was_ some of her unsociable neighbours playing tricks on her, she didn't want them to see how uneasy she was around lifts; even when she came home from work, exhausted, tired, barely shuffling one foot in front of the other, she would still rather climb the stairs to the twentieth floor than get into one of the lifts - _if_ they were even operational at all.

Despite her judgement that this was all completely ridiculous, and that she was too old to be chasing animals around the tower block all night, and the fact that she had probably left her door unlocked, she pressed the button for the thirteenth floor, grinding her teeth together as the graffitied doors slowly slid shut, and the elevator let out a metallic groaning as it started the slow descent towards her destination.

She tapped her foot impatiently. Did she really care what her obnoxious neighbours thought of her? When had she started to care what they thought? She was - _had been_ \- a princess of Nekron, after all, beloved by all who her family reigned over. Well, supposedly beloved by all. Past experience had shown that this wasn't true.

Was this why she was making such a big deal out of this? Because she was secretly worried that they were going to try and destroy her?

Wow. That really _was_ ridiculous. She sighed in exasperation at her own foolish thoughts. Maybe her neighbours were right, for all their stupidity. Maybe she really was mad. Maybe she should talk to someone - not the humans here, but maybe a human doctor. Was there even a cure for madness? Lexi could only hope so.

She had grown to be very bored, standing inside this lift, waiting for it to finally wheeze past the fifteenth floor, when suddenly, the box gave a sudden jolt, making Lexi stumble over her own feet and clutch at the rail to remain upright, making sure to avoid the broken glass from the glass wall behind it. Her fractured reflection looked back at her, eyes wide, almost a vivid blue hue under the dull flickering lights from above the lift doors, splintered into a million tiny pieces. If she was only wearing a little white pinafore and tights, she could almost be a version of Alice herself, with her blonde hair and blue dress that she'd found in a jumble sale a few weeks earlier.

The lift gave another shake, breaking her train of thought, sending her off her feet and to the floor this time. She let out a small _oomf_ as she landed painfully on her side, knocking the air from her lungs. She was up on her feet again almost immediately, rubbing the point of impact where a bruise was certainly going to blossom. The lift seemed to have stopped, arrived at her destination. _About time too_, Lexi thought, as the lift doors slid open, jamming halfway through. It didn't offer her much of a view. She could hardly put an end to all this business when she was stuck in a lift and barely able to see! Holding her breath, Lexi edged her way out of the little metal box, managing to free herself before the lift doors slammed shut behind her.

She had been expecting to see the hall of the thirteenth floor, the same boring view that she saw when she left her own flat. She did a double take, as she finally took in her surroundings. This was _not_ the thirteenth floor that she had been expecting to be greeted with. Nor was it the eerily terrifying Neverside she had been fearing she'd see either. It was a corridor, yes - the familiar, blue-lit corridor that could only belong on the Zarantulus.

_I'm...home?_ Lexi glanced behind her. The lift doors were still behind her, the bright orange graffiti and bold purple swear words out of place in amongst the sleek metallic surfaces of the ship. _Home_, her Nekross intellect rejoiced.

_Is it, though?_ Her human nature questioned. _Is this even my home anymore?_ She'd been on Earth for so long now. Hadn't she technically gone native and become a fully-fledged human in her own right? Fully-fledged humans had no place aboard the Zarantulus, or in the minds of the Nekross family she'd once had. She knew this, had first hand experience, but still, it saddened her now, that her family would want nothing to do with her. She may have despised them half the time, argued with Varg constantly, always tried to get him overthrown, but she still loved him. It hurt to think that he would turn his back on her, after all their years spent together growing up as children, and all their teasing bickering as they reached adulthood. But, then, she was here, wasn't she? Perhaps it was Varg, wanting to talk to her. But, then again, why would he? He believed like her father did - humans were insignificant. The chances of him wanting anything to do with her now were infinitesimal.

She was suddenly startled out of her inner monologue debate. A soft patter of footsteps echoed along the corridor.

"Oh my, oh my! How late, late, late, be I!"

Lexi frowned. If the owner of the familiar high-pitched voice was here, aboard the Zarantulus, it meant that it wasn't caused by one of her idiotic neighbours. What if it was something to do with Varg? A way to get her into the lift so that he could bring her to the ship? Maybe she had been right, after all. Maybe he'd had a change of heart.

Hopeful, she started down the corridor, her footsteps tapping against the metal grating as she broke out into a run. She felt just like a child again, chasing after her older brother, around the mirrored halls of the palace back on Nekron, hiding amongst the trees in the garden, straying in and out of the dark woods that surrounded the royal grounds. She could almost hear the giggles of her five year old self echoing off the walls of the Zarantulus. If she really listened, she felt as thought she _could_ really hear them.

She came stumbling to a stop all of a sudden, skidding along the ground in her flimsy shoes. There was something obstructing her way; a small glass table, about the size of the coffee table she had found for the flat, with a small glass bottle resting upon it, a brown label tied efficiently around its neck.

**Drink Me.**

**(****Not**** Poison).**

"Hm," she said aloud, turning the bottle over in her hand, uncorking it. "I have bad experience when it comes to things being poison..." She shuddered at the memory of the Zanti-Scale, poisoning her cells with unbearable pain. "Either this is a lie, or meant to be comforting to the unknowing drinker."

She sniffed the contents experimentally, recoiling at the foul stench, nose wrinkled. The idea of drinking the possibly poisonous liquid was certainly less appealing now that it had been a few moments earlier. She needed to be intellectual about this.

_What would Tom Clarke do?_ The thought popped into her mind without her permission. She squashed it in annoyance. Why did thoughts of him always crop up at these inconvenient times? Hadn't she agreed that she wasn't going to think about him anymore? Almost a year had passed since she'd last seen him, and she hadn't heard a word from him. Of course, she'd half expected this, as soon as her mind had come to grips with the situation he'd suddenly put her in - the idea that he may not want anything more to do with her and their son - but, even so, the deadly silence she'd received from him...well, it _hurt_.

She coughed aloud, mentally berating herself. This was no time to be moping about thinking about him, when there were more pressing matters to attend to.

Resolved, possibly fuelled by her sudden irritation from the memory of the halfling she wouldn't admit to missing as much as she truly did, she raised the bottle defiantly to her lips - although, _whom_ she was defying, she wasn't entirely sure - and took a long gulp of the vile-smelling green liquid.


	2. The Corridor of Tears

"_Ugh__!_"

Lexi spat the green liquid out almost immediately, spraying it across the surface of the glass table. Her suspicions were correct. It did taste foul. She could still taste it, burning her tongue, swilling down her throat -

"Argh!" She almost dropped the bottle in horror, dropping to her knees. Her muscles spasmed and clicked, nausea churning in her stomach, a burning sensation shooting through her nerves and into her heart. It was like she were made of clay and someone was moulding her, changing her shape to their will. It took her a few seconds to realise that the corridor was growing bigger alongside her. When she looked up, the glass table, the domed ceiling of the Zarantulus, everything, towered above her new height of three inches. She scrambled to her feet, almost in awe.

How peculiar it was to be shorter than everything else! Now she could understand what humans felt like standing next to the Nekross, and how they towered above them. Once upon a time, she would have said it was because the higher species grew to stand above the lower species, the cattle. Now she was one of those cattle, and an incredibly small one at that. This had to be the karma principle humans always talked about, the mystical thing that seeked revenge for those who had wronged others. If that was the case, she was surprised it hadn't caught up with her sooner. Now she was the size of a tracker-bot, the very thing she had used to hunt wizards in her Nekross years. How poetic the universe liked to be.

_I'm no use to anyone being this size._ How was she going to get back to her normal size and go to find her brother? He would probably step on her thinking she was an insect - _or just a regular human_, her Nekross self would have said. She started to pace between the legs of the glass table, hand to her forehead as if checking for a temperature; she fell into the rhythm so suddenly, that she didn't notice the little glass case that had appeared in her way until she stumbled over it and landed, face-first, on the floor. Once she had recovered from her sudden detour, she turned to investigate the new object presented to her. Inside, nestled on a cushion, was a frosted slide of cake. **Eat Me** was written across the icing in currents.

A gift? To make her normal size again?

_Hopefully it will taste more pleasant than the green liquid._

Lifting the glass lid, Lexi took out the piece of cake, dusting her fingers in icing sugar. She took a large bite, chewing slowly, ready to spit it out if it was as foul as the shrinking liquid. Once again, nausea clawed at her in insides, and a sharp pain shot through her limbs, as her body stretched and grew and changed. She winced as her head suddenly collided with the ceiling.

Curse the royal line of Nekron for always bearing tall children! If she had only been a head shorter, she would have been small enough to still move around. She could have forced her way forward with brute strength, the way the Nekross had taught her to solve all her problems. Of course, she knew better than that. Not everything could be solved with intimidation. A person needed to be clever, cunning, intellectual. Her eyes returned to the little table, where the bottle sat. That was how she became small the first time, and, this time, she could control how much she drank, how much was needed to get back to her normal height of six foot. She was trying to prepare herself to take another drink from the vile liquid, when a small figure came bounding into view. Lexi's jaw dropped. The voice she heard echoing down the hallway. No wonder it was familiar. She had heard it so many times before.

"Technician 15!"

Jathro. Only it wasn't Jathro, _exactly_. At least, not how she remembered him. Two long scarlet rabbit ears now sprouted from his head, and a matching scarlet umbrella now hung from his armour, which was a brilliant shade of crimson, with little black hearts dotted here and there. A round pocket watch was now pinned at his waist, emitting a sharp ticking noise as each second passed. Jathro didn't seem to notice her until he skipped head-first into her ankle. He gave a screech when he saw her, eyes wild and rabid.

"Not welcome you be!" He scrambled over her outstretched leg, skidding in his haste to get away from the sudden giant Lexi obstructing the corridor. "Headless shall be I if their majesties not be happy - and they be not happy about this! Not welcome here you be, say I!"

"Wait!" Lexi made a dive for him, stretching out her arms as wide as they could go. The Jathro-like rabbit hopped between her outstretched fingers. "What do you mean headless? Who's not happy? Where are you going? Technician! Come back h - _Ow!_" He'd jabbed her finger with the umbrella when her fingers had brushed the top of one of his rabbit ears. "Hey! That _hurt_ \- come back here!" She made one last vain attempt, but Jathro had already vanished around the corner. She let out a huff. "Now what? Am I meant to stay here forever, in this land of madness, for the rest of my life? Is this punishment for all the bad things I've done?" She remembered a story that Varg used to tell her, to scare her before she went to sleep, about a little Nekross princess (namely her) who was always very naughty. Eventually, when she had been naughty one-too-many-times, she got put inside an unbreakable box - folded up like a telescope - and shipped out to the stars, never to return. She currently wasn't inside any box, but she felt like she'd been folded up like a telescope and put into a confined space. Effectively, Varg's little childhood tale had come true.

The thought of being stuck here forever was an unbearable one. What was she going to do? She wanted to go home. She _needed_ to go home. She needed to find her son. What would he do were she not to return? She had seen, on one of those television sets humans were always so fascinated by, images of sad, lonely children with no parents, living in orphanages and hostels, on the fringes of society, all alone in the world. The thought of Benny being one of those children, alone in the world with no parent to rely on, made her throat tighten and tears come to her eyes; fat, giant drops began to tumble down her cheek and landed on the floor with a muted _splash_. Lexi did not cry very often - hardly at all, really; she bottled up her emotions and pressed them down, the way she had always done, painting on a brave face and dredging up a smile. But, of course, repressing emotions could only last for so long. She knew that, if she started crying - _leaking water,_ as she'd once called it - she would carry on and on, as if all her hidden emotions were suddenly all being felt at once. The last time she had cried like this had been after her return from the Neverside, when she had lost her son for the first time - and the last time, if she had anything to do with it, and wasn't stuck in this corridor for the rest of her existence.

She wiped her eyes, sniffling, her sleeve coming away damp. Her tears had scattered across the floor, filling up the corridor. It now resembled a small lake, Lexi thought, as she continued to mop her eyes. _This_ was why no good came from crying about things she couldn't change. Reaching for the little bottle, rescuing it just as the table was swept away by the pool of tears, she took a small, cautious sip, being careful not to crush the bottle in her hand when she recoiled against the taste once more. Just as before, she felt her muscles jerking and shaking, as the ceiling suddenly fell away from her, and she plunged into the swirling pool, three inches high once more.

She certainly didn't want to drown. Lexi flailed her arms, kicking her legs against the beating current, forcing her head to stay above water as she was carried off down the corridor. How unfortunate would that be, for her to drown in her own tears!


	3. The Unpossible Race

_Is this corridor never-ending?_

Her eyes searched for something she could cling on to, but, as she spun along with the current, surging down the Zarantulus corridor, it didn't give her much time for sightseeing.

A splash somewhere off to her right caught her attention, and dragged her eyes away from the direction that her tears were pulling her. A creature - pink in colour, with rounded mouse ears and a long tail - was paddling through the flood, muttering to itself under its breath. It must have been tiny in actual fact, but, with Lexi's height of three inches, it looked more like a walrus crossed with a platypus.

"Excuse me!" Lexi called out, causing the creature to glance over at her with interest in its eyes. Now that she could see its face, Lexi decided that it now looked like a mouse crossed with a hobgoblin. "Is there a way out of this pool?" She kicked her legs harder to try and catch up with it.

"A-swimming to the bank, be I!" It raised an arm out of the water and pointed off to a spot in the distance; Lexi could see the shapes of other creatures, convening together on the raised surface, out of the way of the flood. This seemed to be the best course of action, given their situation, and so, trying to ignore the aching that was starting to attack her arms, Lexi followed the hobgoblin-mouse towards the shore.

It was a strange party that had found its way to the bank, to say the least. Lexi wrung the water out of her skirt, watching the collected creatures huddling together, yelling angry notions at each other about being wet and cold and cramped. Each one had something familiar about them - a face she'd seen at one point, wandering around the human world. She picked out one of her unsociable neighbours amongst the gathering, and felt bitter satisfaction at the fact that the horrible Mr Winter had been given the beak of a chicken in this most puzzling place.

"You'll be a-shushing, you will!" The hobgoblin-mouse - _Mousegoblin? Hobmouse?_ Lexi pondered - cried, before he cleared his throat. "We will be needing a method for drying ourselves." A hushed murmur fell over the gathered people.

"I could speak!" One of the group suddenly spoke up, making Lexi jump. "I be knowing the very thing to dry us all!"

"What will be that?"

Instead of answering, the owner of the voice - another mouse creature, but more humanoid than hobgoblin, Lexi reasoned as the speaker pushed strands of blonde hair out of her eyes - rose to her feet and began to recite in a monotone.

"The Kingdom of Eng-a-land would be found eighty thousand years ago, by a man of great power named Zebulon. He be creating the Kingdom because of the terrible conditions in other kingdoms - there be a burning sphere of flame in the sky one minute and then a pearl in its place! Have you ever _heard_ of such a thing? - and he will be deeming Eng-a-land to be the land of the free to all who be living there."

Someone yawned loudly. Lexi rubbed her forearms, trying to generate some heat, for she was sure that she would freeze by the time this inaccurate lecture was over.

Thankfully, it did not last much longer.

"Aha!" The hobgoblin-mouse called suddenly. "A race! We must be a-having an Unpossible race!"

"You mean _impossible_," Lexi corrected automatically. The hobgoblin-mouse cast a confused glance over at her.

"_Unpossible_. I be meaning _Unpossible_." He scratched behind one of his pink ears. "Nothing is _impossible_."

"Of course it is!" Lexi protested, being hauled to her feet by one of the other animals. They all seemed _very_ excited at the prospect of an Unpossible race. "A lot of things are impossible, such as humans being able to breathe without lungs, or humans suddenly evolving to be able to take in carbon dioxide and still able to live, or -!" She was cut off by a flurry of feathers and squawks, as the group bustled to one end of the shore, ready to start the Unpossible race.

It was a few seconds later that Lexi realised that the Unpossible race wasn't exactly a race in the human sense of the word. It was a cross between a race and a form of expressive dance; the creatures spun round and round in a circle, taking her with them, waving their

humanoid arms as they went, letting out squeals and snorts in some kind of rhythmic tune that Lexi herself could not follow. The hobgoblin-mouse stood in the centre of all of them and shouted encouragement at some of the younger animals, tapping his feet in time to the strange, uneven humming of the other partakers. Just when Lexi, her head spinning from being pushed and prodded around the circle too many times, thought that she was about to lose her balance and topple over, someone from the back of the line called out "The race will be over!" She collapsed down on the spot, dragging a hand across her eyes to stop her vision from wavering. She was much dryer and warmer than she had been previously, however - a bonus she had not been expecting.

"Who has won the race?" The blonde mouse from earlier cried out. "Who will be giving out the prize?"

"Why, _she_, of course." The hobgoblin-mouse fixed his beady eyes on Lexi, causing the other animals to turn and look at her. Lexi recoiled backwards slightly under the intensity of so many gazes. "She will be a-giving of prizes."

_Prizes?_ "I give you, um..." She racked her brains as the rest of the gathering watched her expectantly. Her fingers searched through the pockets of her dress, until she pulled out a crumpled tissue, used to mop up a spillage of tea in her kitchen a few days previously. She silently commended her brain for forgetting to throw it away. "I give you all a piece of tissue to line your pockets with." This seemed to satisfy all the parties involved; there was a little scuffle when dividing up the tea-stained tissue - Should the little ones get smaller pieces because of their size? Should they have the fragments with tea on them, because tea seemed to be considered as something unheard of in this most strange land?

"You must be a-having a slice too," the hobgoblin-mouse insisted, handing back a tiny square of the tissue to Lexi, who, solemnly, placed it back into her pocket, so as not to upset anyone. It was probably best not to mention what happened to most tissues in human society. They were certainly not this valued.

When they were all settled once more, the blonde mouse called for more stories; the hobgoblin-mouse was prodded forward by Mr Winter, and made to stand in the centre of the circle which had formed once more.

"Tell us the story of the great flood!" Someone called out, making several others chime in with "The great flood, the great flood!", in voices of great excitement. Lexi briefly wondered what the great flood meant, before the hobgoblin-mouse began to talk.

"It be a sad and lonesome tale, the great flood! Before our time came, it is said that the great flood be a-caused by a giant, a monstrous creature who towered above the mere characters of the mirror realm. For thousands of years, the flood roamed, carrying many creatures towards their certain doom." Lexi frowned. The rest of the audience sat waiting with baited breath. "Then, one fateful day, poor souls who had been a-swept away by the villainous flood found refuge on an island larger than the sun! They were at last a-freed from the flood's vengeance!"

"That's just ridiculous!" Lexi jumped in. "The flood wasn't caused "_before your time_"! It was because I cried too much!" She couldn't stop the exasperated sigh from escaping her lips. "And I wasn't a giant - I was just...slightly taller than usual -!" Her outburst had sparked a flurry of panic to travel through the crowd of animals; several were already up from their seats and backing away at the knowledge that their supposed giant was now a three-inch-high blonde girl and that this had not happened hundreds of years ago, but no more than twenty minutes ago. Some had thrown down personal objects - fans, gloves, a walking stick - and were striding off into the distance, the flood and pool of tears clearly forgotten. It didn't take long for the rest of them to disperse, even the hobgoblin-mouse who had pointed out the shore to her, leaving Lexi once again in solitude.

_Why did you have to open your mouth, Lexi? Why did you let your vocal chords free? _She pushed strands of hair from her face as she pulled herself off the ground. Now what was she expected to do? She couldn't sit on this desert island shore all day; she should follow the path of the other animals. They wouldn't have gotten back in the water. The shore had to lead somewhere. All paths led _somewhere_.

She had not been walking for long - no longer than five minutes - when her ears picked up on the sound of footsteps approaching her. She paused in her step, straightening up, drawing herself to her full height - it didn't work as well as it worked when she was six foot - ready to greet whatever was coming towards her. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw the familiar scarlet Nekross-rabbit hopping towards her.

"Ah, Jathro," she began, even though she knew it wasn't really Jathro. "I'm glad you're here -"

"Hm?" Jathro's eyes narrowed as he took her in. "Why, Lucy, what on earth be you doing out here, in the middle of the great flood?" He sounded angry, talking to her with the same tone that Varg used to use when the technician couldn't fix something in the first five seconds. _Lucy?_ Lexi opened her mouth to reply, protest, correct him, but he cut her off.

"Run home and fetch me my good umbrella!" He snapped.

"What's wrong with that one?" She gestured to the item hanging on his arm.

"What be wrong - This be the umbrella I use when I be visiting the loyal members of the royal court!" The look on his face told Lexi that this was something she was supposed to know. Although, _loyal_ didn't seem to be the right word for a royal court. From her experience, she knew that there were many people who made plans to try and overthrow the monarchy. This peculiar world was not going to be different in that respect.

"Lucy!" He clapped, startling her from her momentary inner monologue. "My umbrella! At once!"

_Is Lucy the name of his maid?_ Lexi wondered to herself as she hurried off in the direction that Jathro had pointed in. _What if she's in his house? That could be hard to explain._

Although, given what he tried to do to her family, Lexi half hoped that this housemaid Lucy was there at the house so that she could give rabbit-Jathro the scare of his life. She wasn't kind enough to take pity on the murderous Nekross _just_ yet.


	4. The Red Rabbit Sends In Kooth

Lexi had only been walking for what seemed like a few seconds before she stumbled upon Jathro's house.

In this curious place, it appeared that physics no longer wanted to work in the logical way she knew that they did in the human world; one minute she had been walking along the shore where the animals had gathered for the Unpossible race, and the next minute she was walking up the garden path to a little cottage with a thatched roof in the shape of an open umbrella, nestled away in a little clearing of trees under a beautiful burnt orange sky, and the sleek steel walls of the Zarantulus suddenly no longer there, as if they had just been...stopped, cut off so suddenly that Lexi didn't realise what was happening until the shuffle of the metal grating under her feet became the soft crunch of leaves and twigs. She glanced behind her in surprise; the Zarantulus corridor, that had been behind her a mere few seconds ago, had now vanished, and a thicket of forest had taken its place, tree trunks wound round each other, as if it had been there the entire time and she just hadn't noticed. Maybe it _had_ been there the entire time. Who knew in a backwards place like this? Physics had clearly decided to abandon it's rational judgement when it came to this curious land.

The house appeared to be empty when Lexi pushed the front door open and peered inside. It was exactly like what her previous conception of human housing was - small, cramped, primitive. A wilted plant sat on a table in the hall, un-watered and forgotten. She used to sneer at the idea of living in such a simple, unappealing place. Now she longed for a place like this, a place of her own to call home, away from the cold and damp of her miserable flat on the twentieth floor. Her miserable flat that she needed to get back to _right now_.

Upon seeing no sign of this elusive Lucy character, she began to ascend the stairs. Maybe she could make some kind of bargain with Jathro. If he told her how to get back home, she would give him his particular umbrella. Pleased with this idea, she stooped on the landing to get through the little door at the top of the stairs. Jathro had always been shorter than her; it was nice to see that one element of normality remained in a place where normality seemed like a thing of wistful daydreams on her part.

Through the little door was a small room, one which appeared to be some sort of study. A rabbit-shaped chair sat neatly behind the oak desk, papers and documents scattered across it, along with what appeared to be a bowl of toffees in coloured wrappers. A miserable-looking painting hung on the wall beside the window, of a castle on a lonely hill, situated under a dull beige sky.

_How does Jathro ever find things in here?_ Lexi wondered, starting to sort through the mess that littered the top of the desk. _Anything could be under here_. She briefly recalled the time when she was cleaning the bathroom walls back in the flat, when she had only just moved in, and had found several rude words scratched into the plaster, left by her neighbours, hidden underneath the mould - words that she certainly didn't want her son to be exposed to. When she'd realised that she had no paint or even felt tip pens to hide it up with, she'd hooked a towel into place to cover up the degrading terms, making Benny promise solemnly that he would never ever _ever_ lift the material to look at what was scored into the walls.

There was an old piece of parchment lying on the desk, Lexi noticed when the surface was in some state of organisation. When she had neatly filed away the main bulk of the paperwork - most of them odd messages scrawled in illegible handwriting that she assumed belonged to Jathro - she held the parchment up to the light. This wasn't a garbled message. It was written in fancy typography, carefully, pristine-like. Definetly from someone important. It read as follows:

**By order of the court, you are summoned before the royal house. You are to be appointed the position of page to serve and take instructions from their majesties, and from their majesties only. If you do not appear before the court at the appointed time, the consequences will be dire, chosen by her majesty herself.**

**Decreed by her royal highness, her excellency, Queen Regent of the Unlands and all she surveys.**

**(And the King).**

_Hm_, Lexi thought, placing the piece of parchment on top of the orderly pile she's made and taking a toffee from the bowl, slipping it into her pocket. Shrinking and growing and Unpossible races were hard work. _This queen doesn't sound too pleasant a character._ The dire consequences that the summons spoke of must have been the beheading that Jathro was so worried about when he saw her giant self in the Zarantulus corridor. No wonder he looked so anxious. Lexi herself would have been anxious if she was forever in danger of having her head removed from her body. Even though she didn't want to, a part of her was feeling sorry for the technician. He hadn't asked to be page to this Queen Regent. He hadn't asked to be a technician either when he was serving her father. The sorry feeling turned quickly into guilt, clogging up her chest. She pushed it away and continued her search for this one particularly important umbrella, unwrapping the toffee and popping it into her mouth. Upon finding nothing in the study, she rose to leave and try another room, only to collide her head with the ceiling. She stumbled, landing on her hands and knees, scraping them against the wooden floorboards - not that it mattered so much at that present moment.

The toffee had been a bad idea. It wasn't one of the regular toffees that made your fingers sticky. It was like the cake. It made you grow.

A sudden bang downstairs startled her. "Lucy?"

_Oh dear._ "Yes?" She tried to keep her voice normal.

"Have you yet found my umbrella?" Footsteps on the stairs.

"Well, I, er -" There was a loud smash as Lexi tried to move into a more comfortable position. Her right elbow had extended through the first floor window, shattering glass down onto the grass below.

"What be that?"

"Nothing! I - Oops!" Her foot forced its way through the door, colliding with Jathro. The rabbit-Nekross let out a shriek and backed down the stairs, tripping over his own feet in his haste.

"Monster! _Monster!_"

_No, I'm not!_ Lexi bit her lip to stop her protest from slipping out. There was the sound of scuttling outside the house, before Jathro's voice drifted up to her ears.

"Kooth! Kooth! Where be you?"

_Kooth?_ Lexi gritted her teeth. Just the name of the former chancellor was enough to set anger simmering beneath her skin. Agreed, what her family - or rather, her father - had done to their people was wrong, but they were her family.

_Were._ She'd almost forgotten about her intention to find Varg and ask to sit with him, to work out their family issues. But, what did it matter? She wasn't on the Zarantulus anymore. She was in a forest in the middle of no where, with only a rabbit that looked like Jathro for company.

"Kooth!" Jathro was still calling, desperation in his voice. There was the sound of cartwheels rolling up the path, and Jathro gabbling about the monster in his house.

"Fetch the ladder, fetch the ladder!" The technician fretted; Lexi imagined him wringing his hands together in a frenzy. "Oh, their majesties be not happy if I be late!"

"Be running along then, good sir," came Kooth's voice. Lexi's skin crawled at the familiar melody of it and she shuddered, shaking the room as she did so. "See that their majesties are not displeased."

"The Queen Regent be chopping off my head if I be late."

"I am aware." Kooth hummed in thought. "It seems that the solution be simple."

"Oh?"

"Burn down the house, we must!"

"No!" Lexi cried. She did not want to be inside a burning house! Silence emitted from outside for a moment, before Jathro let out a pitiful cry.

"W-We be not scared of you, monster! Fetch the matches!" This last part was directed towards Kooth. Now starting to reach a state of panic, Lexi's eyes searched the small room that she was currently occupying, looking for a chance of escape, before her gaze rested on the bowl of toffees. They were all in different coloured wrappers. What if the wrappers meant that they would change her size, one way or another?

_If I shrink, I'll be able to get out. If I grow, I'll break the ceiling and I'll still be able to get out,_ Lexi thought. _Either way, I can use my size to get myself out of this mess._

Reaching for one of the other toffees, she discarded the wrapper and took a bite out of the sweet, waiting. To her relief, she found the ceiling sliding away from her, until she was back at her previous height of three inches. Despite the stiffness in her muscles, she leapt to her feet almost immediately, forcing herself to move out of the study and down the stairs towards the front door. Jathro was standing outside, wringing his hands as Lexi predicted, next to a blue lizard-like creature, not too dissimilar to the Nekross. Lexi held back a grimace as she raced past, dodging Jathro's attempts to grab her (once he'd gotten over the initial shock of someone bursting out of his home).

Of course it would be _Kooth_ who got to remain relatively normal. How like the universe that was.

She slowed to a walk when the little house was far behind her, invisible through the forest of flowers and blades of grass that seemed to have sprung up and towered above her, blocking her view of anything that was in front of her. What else was there to do but keep walking?

She tried to console herself with thoughts of home, of Benny. Sooner or later, she would find someone to speak to about getting home. _Someone_ had to know _something_. Not all of the inhabitants here could be as mad as she clearly was.

"_Oof!_" She winced as she collided with the stem of a mushroom, knocking her to the ground. She massaged her forehead; how many bruises had she earned so far on this mad venture? If she didn't want to go home with a broken limb, she had to go home soon. Pushing her hair from her eyes, Lexi stood on the tips of her toes, trying to see over the top of the piece of fungi, to survey her surroundings; upon seeing nothing, she heaved herself up onto the mushroom, so that she hung there, legs suspended in mid air, using her arms to anchor herself there.

Sitting upon the top of the mushroom was a large yellow, scaly caterpillar. Its big blue eyes fixed themselves on Lexi, and stayed there for quite some time, as it continued to drink something through a straw attached to the centre of its mushroom seat. Some very sweet smell was drifting up from where the straw was inserted; Lexi sniffed appreciatively. She'd never smelt anything quite this good before - appetising and delicious. Her mouth was almost watering from it. Yet she could swear she'd known this scent before, _tasted_ this scent before -

"Who are _you_?" The caterpillar demanded suddenly, in a booming voice that cut across her inner monologue.


	5. Advice From The Nekross Caterpillar

They were both silent for quite a long time, matching each other's stares, before the caterpillar repeated the question, more sternly this time.

"_Who_ are _you_?"

Lexi frowned. "I'm...Lexi. Or I was...I am...I -" The caterpillar sent her a foul glare that could set Varg to shame, and she backtracked hurriedly. "Well, you see, I don't really know."

"I do not _see_," the caterpillar stated, taking another long gulp of the intoxicating scent. "Make yourself clear, girl."

"I can't make myself clear. I would have to be myself to make myself clear." She shook her head, folding her arms to even out the pressure of her weight on her elbows. "I've been many different people in my life, and many different sizes just today, and it's all very confusing to me -"

"It isn't," the caterpillar interrupted dryly. Lexi forced herself to not grind her teeth together; she had only been this infuriated by her father (and by Tom - but she wasn't supposed to be thinking about him. She'd already made that perfectly clear to herself). Come to think of it, the caterpillar did bear a slight resemblance to the Nekross King, with it's shrewd blue eyes and unamused expression and inability to listen to her.

"Well, it wouldn't be confusing to you," she said aloud. "You've probably remained the same size throughout your entire existence."

"Indeed."

"Well, sooner or later, you'll have to change your size -"

"And why is that?" It demanded indignantly, taking a sip of the mushroom to control it's impending rage at her statement.

"You're a caterpillar -"

"I am aware of that." The caterpillar's eyes narrowed. "Explain yourself, girl."

_I would if you'd give me a chance._ "At some point during a caterpillar's life, they undergo a transformation," Lexi began, heaving herself up further so that she was now sitting on the mushroom beside the caterpillar. "You'll enter a stage of metamorphosis and then transform into a butterfly..." She trailed off, caught off guard by the mental image of her father as a scaly orange butterfly, flapping around the Zarantulus and barking orders at Varg. She pressed her lips together to stop the sudden giggles from escaping.

"I shall do no such thing," the caterpillar remarked, as she tried to pull herself together.

"I'm pretty sure you will." If the caterpillar was anything like her father, Lexi should know better than to try and contradict it. "And I assure you it will be very strange being a different size."

"It will not."

"You don't think it will feel peculiar being a different size?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Well, I for one find it very peculiar -"

"_You!_" The caterpillar interrupted in it's booming voice. "_You_ are who?" It sounded personally offended by the whole thing. "_Who are you?_"

They were back at the start of the conversation again. How very much like her father the caterpillar was! Lexi resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the similarity.

"Do you not think that _you _ought to tell me who _you_ are first?"

"And why is that?" The caterpillar watched her with knowing eyes, as if it knew that she did not have a proper answer to that question.

"Because..." She tried to think of an answer anyway, but her mind was blank. It was whatever was inside the mushroom; it was making her delirious, making her throat burn and her stomach growl. It was making her hungry.

"You should learn to keep your temper," the caterpillar said suddenly.

"Excuse me?" Lexi blinked.

"Keep. Your. Temper," it repeated slowly, condescendingly.

"What sort of advice is that?" She wondered aloud, before addressing the caterpillar. "Would you be able to tell me where I might find the Queen Regent of the Unlands?"

"Find the Queen Regent?" The caterpillar riled up at the mention of the queen, blue eyes bulging. "What type of inquiry is this? One does not simply _find_ the Queen Regent, little girl!"

"_Little_?" Lexi was about to say more, to tell the caterpillar that she was not a little girl, that she was now a grown woman and was once a princess of Nekron in her own right, thank you very much, when she forced herself to look down at her lap and quell her irritation. She was only three inches tall. She supposed that she was _little_, in that sense. However rude the caterpillar was, it was right. She needed to learn to keep her temper. She took a deep breath. "Well, alright, then. If one does not find the Queen Regent, then how does one speak with her?"

"Why would you wish to speak with her?" The caterpillar asked sulkily.

"I should like to find a way home. And find a way to be a little taller." She ruffled the skirt of her dress, which was now rumpled, damp and smudged with dirt. "Being three inches tall is such a ridiculous height -"

"Ridic - I am _exactly_ three inches high! It is a very good height indeed!" The caterpillar's straw sailed from his mouth as it reared up again; it really was exactly three inches high, Lexi noticed, as it discarded the straw and angrily slid off the mushroom. It looked back over it's shoulder, glaring at her.

"Girl?"

"Yes?"

"One side makes you grow taller," it informed her. "The other, makes you grow shorter."

"One side?" Lexi called after him. "One side of what?"

"The _mushroom_, of course, stupid girl!" With another offended huff, the caterpillar wriggled away through the tall blades of grass and was out of sight in a moment.

Lexi looked down at the different sides of the mushroom. They both seemed to be identical to her eyes. Reaching towards the edges of the circular fungi, she pulled two pieces off. The delectable scent was stronger now, almost irresistible. She glanced at the piece closer; it was like slicing a piece of pie and being able to see the filling inside. Bright rainbow colours danced inside the filling of the mushroom slices; Lexi almost dropped them in disgust.

Magic. The mushroom was full of magic. That was what the caterpillar had been feeding on, and that was where the delicious scent was coming from.

_Delicious._ She'd called it _delicious_. Shame blossomed in her chest, bringing tears to her eyes that burned behind her lids. Wasn't she supposed to be human now? Wasn't she supposed to be free from this kind of Nekross restraint? She'd made a silent promise the first day of being human - she was going to become a new person, a better person, than the Nekross she had been. She wasn't proud of how she had feasted upon people with magic in the cruel way that she had; she thought that she had changed, moved on from that regretful part of her history. Now she was no better than the murderer she had been before.

_Pull yourself together!_ She scolded herself suddenly, scrubbing at her eyes. The last time she'd broken down into tears she'd caused a flood. She didn't want to be the cause of another natural disaster. If she was only her normal height again! She could think clearly, then. With a sigh, she crammed a bite of one of the mushroom segments into her mouth, chewing. She was so tired of being three inches high -

"Argh!" The mushroom was suddenly crushed under her weight as her head broke through the tall blades of grass and stretched up and up and up, until her nose was in line with the highest treetop that she could see.

Well, she had gotten her wish. She wasn't the measly height of three inches any longer. And there appeared to be a bird's nest in her hair...

Before she had time to think much else, there was the sound of wings flapping and a face suddenly inches from hers, making her recoil. A fairy-like creature with the wings of a pigeon hovered at her eye line, her features creased into a twisted frown.

"Serpent!" The high-pitched voice cried. "Serpent! Serpent you be!"

"I'm not a serpent!" Lexi said, trying not to feel highly offended. Not that the other female was willing to listen.

"Eggs you not have!" The voice rose to a screech. "You not have them! The eggs be my own! Mine! Mine, mine, mine, _mine_!" Lexi clutched at her ears, trying to block out the sound of the screaming that was getting louder and screechier with every passing second. She realised that she was still gripping the two mushroom pieces in one hand, and took another, smaller bite, hoping that she wasn't going to grow any taller.

When she removed her hands away from her ears, she was curled up on the ground, the little fae-pigeon lost somewhere in the canopy of the trees; there were no broken eggs scattered around her, so she hoped that the nest that had been on her head was safe. She rose to her feet, and let out a sound of delight as she realised that her height had returned somewhat to normal, albeit a little shorter than what she was usually. The little mushroom pieces still sat in her palm; she pocketed them. She had a feeling that they would come in useful later on...


	6. The Cheshire Cat of Crowe

_It's getting darker,_ Lexi observed, as she paused for breath at the base of an old oak tree, removing the three stones from her shoe that had been stuck there for the past ten minutes. This strange place was doing wonders for her level of exercise; never before had she walked for so long without a predetermined destination. After her encounter with the caterpillar and the fae-pigeon, she'd carried on wandering on her way, looking for a way out, or at least someone she could ask about getting home, until she'd found herself in a dimly lit part of the woods, only illuminated by the sunlight breaking through the heavy canopy of branches and leaves. If it wasn't for that, she would have thought that it had plunged into night time. The lack of stars wouldn't even have surprised her; there were many nights in the human world when stars would disappear behind the cloud cover and fog of pollution and leave her blundering around in the dark with nothing to look up to, nothing to guide her on her way. It sounded ridiculous, even to her madness-filled mind, but when the stars disappeared behind that cloud cover and pollution, it was like her links to her previous family and previous life had disappeared along with them, leaving her without her history, without her context.

She was contemplating over this now, and how ridiculous this feeling of loneliness that occurred whenever the stars were gone truly was, when she suddenly saw a cat perched on one of the branches of the lofty tree, grinning at her, as if it was an old friend who had been waiting for her to arrive for a while now. A mop of curly greying hair was positioned upon its head, framing its warm face and kind eyes behind rosy red glasses. Unlike the caterpillar, this animal seemed friendly enough. She could actually be able to converse with it.

"Excuse me." Lexi called up to the cat, hands in her pockets. "Are you able to help me?"

It watched her with interest. "With what are you needing help?"

"I need to find my way home, and -"

"Oh, my. Are you lost, child?" The cat sounded concerned, but the cheerful expression never left its face.

"A little," Lexi admitted. "Would you tell me which would be the best way for me to go from here?"

"Well, dear." The cat peered at her over its spectacles. "That depends a good deal on where you are wishing to get to."

"I need to find someone to get me home." Anyone. "But, other than that, I don't really care where –"

"Then it really doesn't matter which way you go, does it?"

"So long as I get _somewhere_," Lexi replied.

"Oh, you're bound to do that, my dear," said the cat with another smile. "If you walk for long enough. Every path leads to _somewhere_."

"You're not wrong there." She scuffed her shoes against the ground. "What sort of people live close by? One of them may be able to help me get home."

The cat seemed to mull over about this for a long time. "In that direction -" It flicked its tail to the left "- lives a Hare. And, in that direction -" It's tail flicked to the right "- lives a Hat Maker." Kindred affection clouded it's voice for a moment at the mention of the Hat Maker; Lexi was sure it's grin widened along with it. "Visit whichever one you wish, my dear. They're both as mad as each other, of course -"

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Lexi interrupted in complaint. She'd been among enough mad people to last her entire lifetime. Or her two entire lifetimes, she should say.

"Oh, you can't help that, my dear!" The Cat burst into peals of laughter. "I'm mad. The birds are mad. The flowers are mad. Even the very tree I be sitting in is mad. Everything is mad. We're all mad here. You're mad too."

"How did you reach that conclusion?"

"You must be mad, dear one," replied the Cat. "Or you wouldn't have come here."

She couldn't argue with that logic. "My neighbours all think I'm mad."

"Your neighbours make sense, dear."

"How did you know that you were mad?"

"I simply knew, dear." The cat gave a nonchalant smile; if it were human, Lexi imagined it would probably shrug it's shoulders at that point. "One gets to a point where one simply acknowledges these things to be true and then moves past it."

That didn't sound like a good outcome to Lexi. She didn't want to, one day, get to a point where she simply embraced madness and disorder. She liked some kind of organisation in her life, some kind of routine. "How does a person cure themselves if they are mad?"

The cat erupted into laughter again. "My, my, dear! You cannot simply _cure_ yourself of madness! Either you be mad, or you not be mad! There is no in between when it comes to things like this."

"But...there must be something!"

"There be nothing to do about it, my dear," the cat replied cheerfully, oblivious to the look of panic running across Lexi's face at the thought of not being able to cure herself of madness. "Certainly not in this world. Madness is embraced here."

"Not in my world. Madness is something to be ashamed of there."

"'Tis a peculiar world that must be, dear one." The cat gave her one last beaming smile, before it slowly faded into nothing, dissolving into the background.

"Wait!" Lexi cried suddenly. She didn't want to say goodbye to the friendly cat just yet. It was the only truly pleasant creature she had come across since she had arrived. The cat reappeared as quickly as the word had left her mouth.

"Yes, my dear?"

"I...Could you possibly show me the way to the Hat Maker's residence? I don't fancy the idea of getting lost in the woods again any time soon."

"That depends, my dear," the cat began with an ear-to-ear grin. "Will you be able to keep up?"

"I should think so."

"Well, then. I'll take you to the Hat Maker." It vanished from the tree once more; Lexi thought, for a moment, that it had decided to leave without her, until she turned her gaze in the direction of the path and saw it lazily waiting in the distance, spread out across the ground.

"Coming, then, my dear?"


	7. Tea With A Hat Maker And A Hare

It was quite by accident that Lexi stumbled upon the tea party.

The cat had left her a little further up the path, telling her to "walk straight on, dear, you can't miss it". Lexi hadn't realised how literal those instructions were, until she had stepped into a small cleaning and come face to face with the scene in front of her. A long dining table was situated directly in front of her, littered with teapots and plates and cups, all seemingly twitching and moving as if they were alive. A compact house sat behind the table, built around one of the broad tree trunks; its branches and roots twisted in and out of the gaps in the structure, little coloured lanterns draped in between the leaves.

There appeared to be only two occupants at the extensive table, despite the vast number of seats tucked under the tabletop. One was sleeping, using their long floppy ears and some kind of dish as a pillow - Lexi suspected it was a type of pie, going by the crumbs that were scattered around the bowl. The other was hunched in an armchair at the head of the table, studying their china teacup in excruciating detail. Their face was hidden from her - blocked by an elaborate fedora hat balanced perfectly upon their head - but there was something about the posture of their shoulders that was very familiar...

Lexi's hip knocked into the table, jangling the pots and cups that sat at the empty place setting. The person at the head of the table was pulled out of their intense thinking, and looked up to see what had caused the disturbance. Soft brown eyes met her warm blue ones, peering at her from under the brim of the hat, balanced upon a head of dark hair.

"Tom?" It sounded like a shout in Lexi's head, but barely a whisper left her throat.

A small frown creased his forehead. "Who are you?"

"I'm..." She'd lost her voice. Mere moments after seeing him again, she'd lost her ability to form words. How pathetic. Get it together. "I'm...no one. I'm a guest."

"Guest? An _uninvited_ guest?" He flashed her a smile. "You do know that it's very rude to walk in uninvited, don't you?"

_Very rude to walk in uninvited? It's incredibly rude to leave your child and their other parent alone in the world and not bother to check up on them._ The anger and sadness that she'd kept hidden away bubbled to the surface.

"I could hardly walk in, since you are technically blocking my way."

"There is always more than one path to take, little girl."

"_Little girl_?" Lexi stared at him incredulously. Why was everybody calling her that? She wasn't a little girl anymore - not in height or in age. "I'm older than you!" _And much more responsible and __committed__ than you ever were_, her bitterness whispered in the back of her mind. She pushed it away quickly, before it became visible on her face.

He laughed, a high-pitched giggle, clapping his hands. As manic and mad as everybody else in this warped land. _Does that make us even now?_ Lexi wondered. _For now we are both mad_. He gestured for her to sit in the empty chair next to him. She remained standing, arms folded.

"No, thank you. I'd rather not."

"I just invited you to sit down." Lexi made no response; she felt him suddenly reach out and take her hand, startling her somewhat. Tom grinned at her from under his hat, as if he already knew that she was going to sit down next to him anyway. "You're not going to add to your list of rudeness, are you, fair one? Please. Sit." He watched her hesitate, wrestle with herself, sigh, and then sit in the chair, a scowl on her face, arms still folded in resistance. He dropped his hold on her hand, but she felt his continued gaze on her, as she smoothed out the hem of her dress, trying not to meet his eyes.

"Never before have we had such a pretty one at our table," he said suddenly, startling Lexi and bringing her gaze up to his. He tipped his hat and reclined back in his chair. "Isn't that right, Harewood - _Harewood!_" He grabbed something that looked vaguely like a scone and hurled it in the direction of the other guest. "Is that any way to behave in front of one so fair? Sleeping at the table - the very nerve of it!"

Benny Sherwood raised his head from the pie bowl it had been in, berry tart sliding down his face. "Apologises most profound, I assure you," he said, licking the trail of juice running down his cheek.

Tom reached for one of the wriggling teapots and poured himself a cup of tea. He paused, looking towards Lexi. "Tea? Or would one prefer wine?"

"I don't see any wine."

"That's because there isn't any," Benny cut in.

"It wasn't very civil of you to offer it, then," Lexi remarked, glaring at Tom, who simply shrugged, in the way he always did when faced with a situation like this.

"Your hair needs cutting," he commented suddenly, changing the subject rather brashly. Lexi glanced down as best she could at the shoulder length strands of blonde hair, briefly remembering a conversation from long ago when Tom told her that her short hair suited her. He was probably trying to flatter his way out of something, but, even so, there had been honesty in the statement. Flattery wouldn't get rid of her anger so quickly this time - or, at least, she liked to think.

"You do know that it's very rude to make personal comments, don't you?" She said, mimicking his words from earlier.

"I believe we now have the same amount of rudeness indebted to us, fair one. I believe that makes us equals."

"We are not equals," Lexi ground out before she could stop herself. They were _not_ equals. _How can people be equals when one does not even have the inclination to contact the other?_ She gritted her teeth to stop more of the poisonous words escaping.

For the first time, the manic grin started to slip. "I appear to have offended you in some way."

Lexi looked at him and his confusion-filled eyes. What was it about his eyes that she liked so much? Why could they get her to do nearly everything - including forgiving him? Yet she almost didn't want to forgive him. Without her anger at his silence and flippancy towards her, at his simple disregard of everything they'd shared and had together, all that would be left was the miserable longing and loneliness. She was already lonely enough, at the scrutiny of her neighbours. Was it wrong to want to be selfish in such a way?

"I'm sorry." Tom was still waiting for a reply. "You just...remind me of someone I used to know."

"I see." The look on his face told her that he didn't really "see". "Did this person do you wrong, fair one?"

"Yes...No. Yes?" Her sentence dissolved into a sigh. "It's incredibly complicated, I'm afraid."

"Nothing is ever complicated here," he insisted, worry forming in his brown eyes. She didn't want to confuse him any more than he already was by bringing along her tangled mess of human problems.

"I'm sorry - I'm being very rude again, aren't I?"

"One so fair such as you could never truly be rude in such a way," he replied comfortingly.

Lexi unsuccessfully tried to stop the smile from crossing her face. No matter how angry she was towards Tom's silence, he never failed to make her laugh, make her smile. It was one of the things she loved most about him. One of the things she missed about him the most, no matter how much she didn't want to admit it. Stubborn pride had something to do with that.

"Tea?"

"I would love some tea, thank you."

"Tea it shall be!" Tom poured her a cup, the bright smile back on his face in an instant at her assurance. She took a sip, trying not to recoil at the sudden foul taste that entered her mouth. Tom had never been one for tea making; some things would never change. "Do you know what we need, Harewood?"

"What is that?"

"A riddle!" Tom propped his feet up on the arm of his chair. "_Why is a raven like a writing desk?_" He turned to look at Lexi. "Do you think you can answer it?"

"Of course."

"Then, you should." It was Benny again.

"I shall."

"Then, say what you mean."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There be no point you proclaiming that you can answer a riddle and then not answering. You should say what you mean." Benny swirled his cup of tea around in the cup so that some sloshed over the side.

"They mean the same thing, really," Lexi said.

"Of course they do not! If I were to say, _"I see what I eat"_, it would not be the same as saying _"I eat what I see"_!"

"Or," Tom cut in. "_"I breathe when I sleep"_ would be the same as _"I sleep when I breathe"_."

"Exactly!" Benny slammed his cup down, shattering the china into three large fragments and spilling the remainder of his tea. He glanced at Lexi, who was watching the exchange in a combination of awe and confusion. "Well, then? What's the answer to the riddle?"

"A raven is like a writing desk because they both use feathers. The raven has feathers because it is a species of bird, and a writing desk has a feather for a person to write with."

"Huh!" Benny scoffed. "Now you are being ridiculous!"

"Harewood! _Rudenes__s_!" Tom threw another scone his way.

"So, what is the real answer?" Lexi asked, trying to distract the two of them before a war of scones broke out.

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"Nor I," Tom added, before he tipped his hat and changed the subject again. "Do you know what we need now?"

"More tea?" Benny offered, holding up a jade green tea pot.

"True, yes, but, no."

"Another riddle?" Lexi asked, hoping that it wasn't.

"No!"

"What are we needing, then, Hat Maker?"

"A song!" Tom cried. "A song, to entertain our fair guest - _Song!_" He leapt out of his seat, almost knocking it to the ground, and hurled himself across the table, retrieving a large golden box that Lexi hadn't noticed when she'd sat down. "It simply will not do to be without a song on such a fine day!" There was a snuffling from inside the box, before the lid burst off, and a wrinkled orange and pink creature poked its head out.

"It's a hobbledehoy!" Lexi cried in recollection, as the little "head on two feet" - Lexi's previous description of it - cleared it's throat and began to warble in a disconnected tune.

_"Twinkle Twinkle, little bird,_

_Causing so much wonder, it's absurd!_

_Round and round the world you fly,_

_Like a lost soul __o__n the Neverside!"_

Lexi frowned, whilst Tom broke into a round of applause. "I don't quite remember that version. I seem to remember something about stars being in that melody."

"I sang it at the Queen Regent's great concert not too long ago," Benny began, a wistful look in his eyes. "It stopped Time, I'll have you know."

"That's impossible!" Lexi protested. "No one can stop time! Time isn't a thing - it's a concept developed by humans!"

"You're pronouncing it all wrong," Tom corrected her. "He's not _time_, he's _Time_." He gestured to his friend. "Share the story with us, Harewood."

"Well, I had only made it through the first verse -" Benny continued "- when, quite suddenly, the Queen Regent leapt up and cried out that I was to be without my head at first light, because I had murdered Time."

"And, did you?"

"Of course not! Do you take me for a murderer?" He didn't wait for her answer. "Regardless, Time became quite offended by the whole ordeal, I can tell you."

"And now he won't do anything we ask of him," Tom finished. "It's always tea time here."

"Is that why there are so many empty seats?" Lexi looked down at the long line of vacant places, with cups set out in front of them.

"Indeed."

"Don't you ever get bored of tea, with it always being tea time?"

"_Bored_ of _tea_?" Benny's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Why, with Time making it this way, we'll never be late for tea!" He nodded firmly. "_Never _be late for tea. Such rudeness is that."

"Indeed," Tom repeated, before leaning towards Lexi. "Would you tell us a story, fair one? I shall share one also, if you will."

"Alright." Lexi racked her brains, but only one story came to mind. Tom and Benny watched her expectantly. "Once upon a time, there was a naughty little princess," she began. "She liked mischief and mayhem, and was determined to cause them everywhere she went."

"She sounds very pleasant," Benny announced. Tom shushed him, so that Lexi could continue.

"One day, the little princess was so naughty that the wise old elders gathered together to create a stratagem as to what to do. Eventually, one of them came up with a brilliant plan. They build an unbreakable box, and lured the little princess inside, shutting her up like a telescope." She paused. When there was no interruption, she carried on. "They couldn't leave her in the box forever, however. She was still a child, after all. So, they sent the little princess out to the stars, letting her float amongst the galaxies for all eternity - both free and constricted at the same time." She nodded to indicate that she was finished. _Free and constricted_ \- those words rang true when she thought about her current predicament.

"That was a sad story," Benny commented. "Will you tell one now, Hat Maker?"

"I shall indeed." Tom finished his cup of tea, before he began his tale. "Once, there were two little children, named Mot and Alexia, who lived down a well, in a hidden forest -"

"What did they eat?" Benny inquired, cutting him off.

"Why, fish fingers and custard, of course!"

"What an odd combination," Lexi said.

"What's odd about it?" Benny demanded, but he didn't get an answer.

"Why did Mot and Alexia live in the forest in the well?" Her question was addressed to Tom.

"Because it was a well of fish fingers and custard."

"But, how did they eat these things?"

"You can draw water from a well of water. You can draw treacle from a well of treacle. Therefore, you can draw fish fingers and custard from a well of fish fingers and custard."

"It's only logic," Benny added.

"Anyway, whilst they were in the well, they learnt to draw. All sorts of things they learnt to draw, like marmalade and monsters and the moon - lots of things beginning with the letter M."

"Why the letter M?"

"Why not the letter M?"

Lexi gave her shoulders a half shrug. "Fair enough, I suppose."

"Very fair it is indeed, to such a fair one as you." He refilled her cup, before inquiring, "More tea?"

Lexi tried to bare a smile at the thought of more of Tom's terrible tea, before remembering why exactly she'd asked to be led here in the first place. "I was wondering if you could help me in something."

"Oh, yes? What would that be, fair one?"

"I need to find my way home, and I was hoping that you knew of anything -"

"_Your_ way? You have no way!" Benny cried indignantly, angrily stabbing into the remains of what had been his berry pie pillow. "All ways here are the Queen Regent's way!"

"Would she be able to send me home, then?"

"Most certainly. Whether she will take the decision to do so or not is another matter."

"Is there a way I could reach her?"

"There is always a way to reach the Queen Regent," Tom replied, gesturing to something behind her. Lexi turned to look, only to discover a little door cut into the tree bark. "Or rather, there is always a way for the Queen Regent to reach us. By royal decree, there must be one at every dwelling." Benny let out an incoherent grumble, busying himself with stabbing his pie.

"This will take me straight to her?" Lexi rose from her seat, almost hopeful, forgetting about the tea entirely.

"Yes, fair one." He looked disgruntled. Lexi frowned slightly.

"What is it?"

"I only wish I had enjoyed the pleasure of your company more."

Touched, Lexi's mouth pulled up into a half smile. "Well, it was nice to see you again - I mean, _meet_ you." She quickly corrected herself. Technically she hadn't met Hat Maker Tom before.

"The feeling is mutual, my dear." They stayed looking at each other in silence.

"Thank you for the tea," she said finally.

"The pleasure was all mine."

"Right."

"Yes."

"Alright -"

"_Goodbye!_" Benny yelled suddenly, cutting them off. He was certainly eager to get rid of her. With something that resembled a huff and a sigh, Lexi turned away from the tea party, headed towards the door in the tree that would lead her to the Queen Regent that she had heard so much about, trying not to look so glum.

Why was she feeling this immense guilt? Tom had already left her, after all. Left her to wander the human world like a ghost. But, surely, by leaving this Hat Maker Tom when he wished that she would stay, she was doing exactly the same thing as he did to her? Did that make her a terrible person, or an entitled one? Terrible because she then was just as bad as he was? Entitled to make him feel the loneliness that she did? Not that he ever would. He had Benny Sherwood - or _Harewood_, in this case. He would never feel the crippling isolation that she did.

She glanced back over her shoulder as she was about to step through; Benny had gone back into his deep slumber, having given up on mutilating his pie, but Tom was still watching her, tea pot in hand, pouring himself another cup; the liquid was overflowing onto his saucer by now. Lexi gave him a half hearted wave, before dragging her gaze away and stepping through the door, letting it close behind her.


	8. The Queen Regent

It was a courtyard that Lexi found herself in, when the little tree door had swung shut behind her, situated in front of a palace. A majestic palace, it was, with spiralling turrets and a domed roof and a structure of glossy marble. It reminded Lexi of the palace on Nekron where she had spent her childhood years, of the many days she had spent running about the place, exploring every room, stumbling down corridors and going round in circles and giggling every time she got lost or tumbled to the floor dizzily. This palace even had a small greenhouse, almost invisible in the shadow of the enormous dwelling, just like her childhood home; she could remember curling up on the cold stone floor, book tucked under her head like a pillow, surrounded by the crisp air filled with the scent of flowers from all over the planet.

Surrounding the palace were four towering stone walls, encasing the inhabitants in. On the wall to her left, a large topiary had been constructed, forming the shapes of shrewd blue eyes, a regal posture, two long tentacles. _The face of the Queen Regent?_ Lexi wondered, deciding to investigate.

Three Nekross guards were stood a few meters away from her, paintbrushes in hand, their backs turned, muttering together in angry voices.

"This be all your fault!" One snarled, shoving another.

"It be not!" The accused guard glowered at the third. "It be his fault. _His _mistake." He got another push.

"You be daring to accuse me of this?"

"Excuse me?" Lexi cut across the bickering. "May I ask what is wrong?"

The first guard who had spoken narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, suspicious, before deciding that a human girl was clearly harmless - or too primitive to understand, Lexi guessed.

"We're painting the flowers." He raised the pot of purple paint in his hands.

"I see." Lexi glanced at the flowers in the topiary's hand. Akina - almost like the Nekross equivalent to a bluebell from Earth. Of course, akina had a purpose, unlike most of the plants on the human home planet. Akina was used as a type of poison; one taste of akina seeds and the victim was in a death-like sleep for all eternity unless an antidote was prepared in the course of one Nekron day. "Why are you painting the akina flowers?" Despite their deadly purpose, Lexi thought that akina flowers were quite pretty, with their glowing blue tint and delicate shape.

The three guards looked between each other. The one who had been shoved suddenly spoke up.

"Well, you see, Miss, the fact of this matter is being that they -" Growls escaped the two other Nekross "- _we_ were instructed to plant purple tumntun flowers, but, instead, we planted the akina flowers by mistake."

"And if the Queen Regent be seeing, she'd wave a hand and we'd be without our heads in an instant," one of the others added. "So, we be coming up with a plan!"

"That's right!" The last jumped in. "We be painting the akina to look like the tumntun flower!"

"Ah. I see." The two flowers did look similar. The plan therefore did make sense. "Well, let me help you. You look like you need another set of hands." She bent to retrieve another paintbrush from the nearest paint pot and started to dab gently at the akina flower. She had only coloured one petal before the garbled sound of a horn blared out from somewhere in the castle. Both the guards and Lexi stopped at the same time.

"The Queen Regent!" One said in confusion.

"The Queen Regent!" Another cried in horror.

"The Queen Regent!" The shoved guard whimpered.

"The Queen Regent!" Lexi exclaimed in interest.

"Bow down to the Queen!" The guards hurled themselves to the ground, burying their face in the grass. Lexi, unsure of what to do, remained standing, quickly throwing her paintbrush into a nearby bush, out of sight as a rally of guards filed out of the palace doors and headed directly towards them, closing in. Lexi wasn't surprised to see that their armour was now scarlet, covered in little hearts. Red signified danger. This was proving to be a dangerous place - not just for her, but for everyone.

Jathro brought up the rear of the procession, blasting a warbling tune through something that vaguely resembled a trumpet. Lexi watched, fascinated; when the guards were standing to attention in their lines, Jathro gave his instrument a final puff and Lexi craned her neck eagerly as the Queen Regent made her grand entrance. She was very pretty, she thought, in her long trailing crimson gown and elegant crown balanced upon her head. She could have sworn she'd seen her before somewhere - most likely at one of the large gathering the royal family had held back on Nekron. They were always doing things like that. Humans would use the term _"__party animals__"_ for them, she'd bet.

She almost let out a shriek when she realised who was on the Queen Regent's arm, and dropped to the ground like her fellow painters. _Varg!_ Her stomach gave an uncomfortable twist. Of course there was the chance that her brother wouldn't recognise her. But that made it even worse. She would just be another human to him. The fact that she was his sister in human form would mean nothing to him in this world. The one advantage she had wouldn't help her now.

"Announcing her grace, her excellency, her royal majesty, Lady Lyzera, the Queen Regent of the Unlands!" Jathro cried, as applause broke out amongst the guards. There was a sharp, meaningful cough from behind him. Jathro glanced to see who it was, before facing the gathered procession once more. "...And, erm, the King."

Varg waited. No one clapped for him.

_How on earth did Varg manage to get a wife?_ Lexi wondered to herself.

"Well, well, well." The Queen Regent - _Lyzera_...The name rang a bell - dropped Varg's arm and crossed to the flower-filled structure of herself. "What do we have here?" She plucked one of the akina flowers, sniffing it. Lexi was glad that she had decided to drop to the floor when she did; it meant that she did not have to face the look of fury upon the Queen Regent's face that was certainly there.

"_Who's been painting my flowers!?_" She screeched, discarding the limp plant to the ground. "Who was it?" Lexi felt her eyes sweep over her and travel around the court. "Someone will be losing their head for this!"

"Oh, please, your excellency, have pity!" One of the guards cried suddenly, raising their head to beg. "It be a harmless mistake -"

"Harmless? _Harmless_!?" Her lilac cheeks flushed red with rage. "Why, you - you - _imbecile_! Off with their heads!"

The guards broke out into wails of despair and yells of protest, as they were seized under the arms and dragged off towards the palace, kicking and fighting, but ultimately not strong enough. Lexi felt arms around her too, and she was hauled off the ground, but, to her relief, the grip on her was dropped as soon as she was righted on her feet.

"Are their heads gone yet?" Lyzera demanded. Jathro gave a blow on his instrument and called, "As gone as breath on glass, your majesty!"

Finally, with the guards disposed of, Lyzera fixed her gaze on Lexi, who was dusting down her dress.

"And who is _this_?" She demanded to Varg, who peered at his younger sister with a stranger's eyes.

"I haven't the faintest idea, my love."

"Well? Who is she?" Lyzera turned to glare at the knave stood behind her, who only bowed. He had a vague resemblance to Michael Clarke, Lexi thought, hidden away under his tunic and velvet cap. "_Idiot_!" Lyzera gave him a distasteful look, before returning her focus to Lexi. "What is your name, child?" She barked.

"Lexi." The eponymous girl folded her arms defiantly. _And I'm not a child_, she added silently.

Lyzera twitched at this. "Stand up straight. Speak nicely. Stop twiddling your fingers in that irritating manner!" Lexi straightened her back and let her arms hang limp by her sides. "Now, then, child. Where did you come from?"

"Far away -"

"Your excellency!" Varg prompted her, giving her a violent poke. Lexi rubbed the spot where his gloved finger had hurt her, glaring at him.

"Far away, your excellency."

"I see." Lyzera gestured for the three of them to walk. "What brings you here to my kingdom?"

"Well, I was just wondering if you would help me find my way home -"

"_Your _way!? All ways here are _my_ way!"

Lexi hastily backtracked. She didn't like this spoilt, obnoxious Queen Regent, but her desire to return home was greater than her disgust. "Yes, yes, I'm aware of that. I was just using an expression of speech."

"Be sure not to use it again." Lyzera turned to Varg. "Tell the page to create a royal decree. No expressions of speech to be said in the presence of her excellency, the Queen Regent."

"And the King Regent," Varg insisted.

"Oh. Yes. I suppose. And the King Regent also." Lyzera sounded flippant. Varg looked affronted. Lexi stifled a chuckle. Was this what it would be like when Varg got himself a wife back in her world? No doubt he would be married off sooner or later, now that he had come of age. The same fate would have been destined for her too, if she had not come to earth with her father and brother. She was certainly glad that she had escaped that fate now that she was human.

"Anyway, your excellency, I was just going to ask you -"

"I'll ask the questions here!" Lyzera snapped, before her voice returned to normal volume. "Do you play croquet?"

_Croquet? What on earth is that?_ "Um...yes?"

"Then, let the games begin!"


	9. A Curious Game Of Croquet

It soon became apparent to Lexi that croquet was a game in which you knocked objects through hoops. In the grounds of the Queen Regent's palace, the game was played with crimson hedgehogs and ebony flamingos and life sized playing cards that the guards had to hold in order to keep them in position. It all looked very complicated to Lexi; a mallet and tennis ball would have been much more simple.

"_Knave!_" Lyzera was bellowing as everybody took their places. "Bring me my tarts! I get a little peckish after a game of croquet." Michael - or rather, the Knave - disappeared in the direction of the palace, as Lexi selected her flamingo and hedgehog.

The main obstacle she found was trying to control her flamingo. Whilst Lady Lyzera had no trouble at all with managing her croquet mallet, Lexi's would not seem to behave, no matter how many times she gazed pleadingly at it; she would manage to tuck its neck under her arm somehow, but every time she was about to take a swing at the hedgehog, the flamingo would twist its neck to look at her with a confused expression upon its face, making her snort with amusement, or the hedgehog would start to limp away to try and avoid getting hit, meaning that Lexi would have to position her equipment all over again.

Even the way that this croquet was peculiar; every player played together at the same time, regardless of whether it was their turn or not, which naturally led to arguing and bickering and quarrelling over hedgehogs, with Lady Lyzera becoming more enraged by the minute, shouting "Off with his head!" and "Off with her head!" every few minutes. Those who had been sentenced were dragged off by the executioner to be held in the palace prison cells until the Queen Regent could see to them, meaning that the playing card arches were disappearing pretty quickly. Lexi was beginning to feel uneasy at the amount of beheadings that had been ordered since the croquet started.

It was about fifteen minutes into the game that Lexi felt something brushing against her ankle. She glanced down in curiosity, only to smile as she saw the familiar cat with greying hair and spectacles strolling alongside her.

"'Tis a fine day, is it not, my dear?" It commented.

"I suppose so." Lexi slung her flamingo over her shoulder like a rucksack, letting its head rest in the crook of her neck, as she did a quick recount of her meeting with Hat Maker Tom and Harewood, the execution of her fellow painters, and her utter lack of knowledge on croquet.

"What is your opinion on the croquet now, dear?"

"Hm." Lexi frowned, a crease between her eyebrows. "I don't think that this croquet is a very fair game - The players show each other no respect when they argue in such a way, and there doesn't seem to be any particular rules that are in place; if there are, no one appears to be following them."

"That is because there be not any rules when the Queen Regent be concerned, my dear," the cat replied. "Speaking of which, how do you find our dear Queen Regent?"

"_Find_ her?" Lexi folded her arms, almost dropping her flamingo. "Why, I think she's -" She noticed Lady Lyzera inching closer at this moment, having heard her title being mentioned "- ..._lovely_. Yes. Lovely. That's the word I would use. And definetly the winner of this croquet game. I do not see any point in me continuing, since I've clearly lost." Lyzera nodded, satisfied, and moved on.

"Who _are_ you talking to, girl?" Lexi jumped. Varg had appeared behind her without her noticing and was watching her conversation in confusion.

"A cat." Lexi gestured down to her new sidekick. "A very pleasant cat, I must add. Let me introduce the two of you."

Varg peered at the animal, a look of distaste in his eyes. He obviously wasn't as impressed with the grinning cat as Lexi was.

"I don't care for it much," he commented off-handedly. "But it may bow to me, even so."

"I do not so wish to," the cat replied. Varg's eyes narrowed into slits as he glared.

"Why, you impertinent little -!" His insult was cut off with a loud shout from one of the croquet players; someone had stolen his hedgehog. The cat simply beamed in its usual way. This seemed to anger Varg more. "Do not look at me in such a way, ridiculous creature!"

"_A cat may look at a king_," Lexi quoted. At Varg's silence, she tried to explain. "_The Proverbs And Epigrams Of John Heywood?_" More silence. "It's the book the quote is written in."

"Well, it must be removed at once." Varg searched for his wife. "My love! I wish this cat to be removed from my sight immediately!"

"Can it not wait?" Lyzera glanced over to the small gathering, raised an eyebrow, and then turned back to the croquet game, calling "Off with it's head!" over her shoulder - the only resolution to problems that she seemed to know.

"I shall fetch the executioner myself!" Varg announced, making a grab for the cat. Lexi smirked at the sight of her brother grappling at thin air as the cat disappeared in the blink of an eye. Huffing, Varg stormed off in the opposite direction, yelling that the executioner must come here at once or he would be sentenced to beheading by his wife.

_I may as well go and see how the game is getting on,_ Lexi thought, hurrying along to catch up with Lady Lyzera, who was in the middle of screaming at one of the guards for dropping his playing card and ruining her perfect streak; he too was sentenced to execution. Lexi noticed that most of the guards had disappeared from the party, having been sentenced and taken to the cells. Effectively, the game had come to an end at last.

_I shall not be playing croquet when I return home,_ Lexi decided, turning back the way she had come, hoping that the cat would have reappeared again. When she came to a stop, she saw that quite a crowd had formed around the cat, who's head was hovering in mid air, just out of reach from the spectators below. Varg was stood with the royal executioner, along with the few number of guards who were left standing after the croquet game, squabbling over the state of the cat.

"You cannot possibly be beheading a thing that has no body!" The executioner protested.

"I'll behead you myself if you do not stop talking such nonsense and follow your orders!" Varg roared. "Everything can be beheaded - get on with it!"

"No!"

"I'll behead you all if I have to!" A lot of the guards looked wary.

"That's not fair -!" Lexi started to say, but she was cut off by a high-pitched yowl echoing from somewhere in the distance.

"_Someone has stolen three of my tarts!_"


	10. The Trial

Lexi had never been in a court of justice before, in the human world or back on Nekron; she'd only read about them in books. Although she was fairly sure that courts in the human world were not exactly like the one currently being held in the palace. Lyzera and Varg sat at the head of the room, presiding above all they surveyed. The Knave was in front of them, chained and without his cap. A jury of twelve guards was situated to her left, writing things down on blackboards and muttering amongst each other. Lexi herself was sitting just next to the witness box, which was currently empty. Varg had insisted that she give evidence at whatever trial was being held; she'd tried to tell him that she didn't see anything, but, coming just after his threats of execution to everyone involved, she wasn't in a hurry to start bickering with her sibling like she used to.

Jathro stood by Varg's side, blowing a tune on his trumpet-like instrument and holding a piece of parchment in his hand. After he had completed his performance, he cleared his throat and unrolled the paper, and called out, "Welcome to all!" He bowed to each person in turn. "Her excellency. Members of our jury. Loyal subjects." A growl cut him off. "...And the King." Again, no one clapped. Lexi felt that this was very unfair and rose from her seat to applaud for her brother.

"Silence in the court!" Jathro fixed his beady eyes on her, and Lexi retreated back into her seat. Hushed murmurs fell over the gathered people, until Varg barked an order at Jathro.

"Read the accusation, page!"

Jathro fumbled with the parchment. "Yes, your excellency! Queen Regent of the Unlands, Lady Lyzera, is charging the Knave of the Unlands with the thievery of three of her tarts -"

"I did no such thing!" The Knave yelled indignantly. One of the prison guards yanked his chain and shushed him.

"Are you ready for your sentence, imbecile?" Lyzera demanded.

"Hang on!" Lexi leapt up again to object. "There must be a verdict first!"

"Sentence first! Verdict later!"

"But, that isn't the way -!"

"_All ways are my ways!_" Lyzera screeched, pointing accusingly at Lexi. "Off with her -!"

"My love." Varg sat his wife down, trying to console her. "We have more pressing matters to be worrying about, yes? Let us deal with the girl later." He glared over at Lexi - a warning to keep her mouth shut.

"Very well," Lyzera grumbled. "But, make it quick!"

"Page! Call the first witness!"

"First witnesses!" Jathro announced. The doors to the court were opened to usher in the witnesses. Lexi twisted in her seat and craned her neck to see who it was, surprised to see that it was, in fact, Tom and Benny. Tom was still holding a cup of steaming tea, which he kept hold of as Benny and he tried to both fit inside the witness booth at the same time. He caught sight of Lexi watching him and his grin widened.

"Why, how pleasant it is to see you again, fair one!"

"Silence!" Lyzera shouted before Lexi could reply. "Remove those offending objects from my courtroom!"

Tom looked confused. "What offending items?"

"_Those!_"

"My tea?" Tom took a sip of the liquid. "Ah, yes. Well, y'see, when you be calling us to the trial, we had not finished our tea yet. Isn't that right, Harewood - _Harewood!_" He shoved Benny awake. "Rudeness!"

"Apologies," Benny said with a yawn.

"Next time you sleep in my courtroom, I'll take off your head!" Lyzera exhaled sharply, ruffling the skirt of her long gown, before taking another look at Benny. "You there!" She pointed to the nearest guard. "Get me the list of singers from the last concert at once!"

"You should have finished tea by now," Jathro commented meanwhile, frowning over the top of the parchment at the two witnesses. "When did you start?"

"The fourteenth," Tom replied.

"Fifteenth," Benny corrected. "Although, now that I think about it, it could have been the sixteenth..."

"Or the seventeenth," Tom added.

"That be true. Sixteenth or the seventeenth, I cannot recall which -"

"Get _on_ with it!" Varg ordered.

"Yes. I definetly think 'twas the seventeenth!" Benny said in elation.

"If you do not give your evidence in the next ten seconds, I will have you executed on the spot!" This didn't seem to elicit the reaction Varg wanted; Tom and Benny simply dissolved into giggles, infuriating the King Regent even further. His cheeks were starting to become as scarlet as Jathro and his rabbit ears.

"Give evidence this instant or I will _obliterate_ you!"

"Evidence to what, exactly?" Tom asked. Lexi bit her lip to hide the snort of amusement that threatened to escape her. Another thing that hadn't changed: Tom trying to purposely wind up her brother.

"What do you know of this horrible crime?" Jathro stepped in quickly, before Varg could turn murderous, relaying the information of the Knave's alleged theft.

Tom gave a nonchalant shrug, taking another gulp of tea. "We be knowing nothing."

"_Nothing whatever?_" Varg challenged.

"_Nothing whatever!_" Tom yelled back in the same tone.

"That's very important! Jury, write that down!" The whole thing had started to turn into a screaming match to Lexi's mind, as the jury scribbled away at their blackboards and reached a conclusion of the number twelve. "If that's all you maddening people know, you may stand down."

"I be afraid we cannot." Tom blinked at him. "To stand down, we would have to go lower. We can go no lower."

"Sit. _Down_." Varg hissed each word. "Or, better, yet, get out of my sight!" Someone in the jury cheered at the ruling; they were instantly silenced.

"Yes, your excellency!" Benny was watching Lyzera nervously; she was still looking through the list of singers from the last concert. Was this about murdering Time? Lexi suspected that it was.

"You are dismissed!" Jathro announced to the rest of the court.

"Behead one of them on the way out!" Lyzera called out, but Tom and Benny had already slipped to the back of the courtroom before the guards could catch them. Lexi couldn't tell whether they were still in the room or not (she hoped they weren't, for Lyzera would probably behead them when she finished with the list of singers) but Varg's voice dragged her attention back to the front of the court.

"Call the next witness!"

"Next witness!" Lexi watched as one of the guards carried in the next witness and placed them into the booth. It was the scaly orange caterpillar, the one who had rudely reprimanded her for everything she had said. She'd hoped she wouldn't see it again.

"Give your evidence," Varg repeated, just as he had done in front of Tom and Benny.

The caterpillar glared at him. "Shan't."

Varg blinked. "Excuse me? I thought I told you to give evidence, _rodent_!"

"And I said, I shall not." It was like watching Varg and her father arguing about a wizard-catching scheme.

"You dare defy your King Regent!?" Varg bellowed.

"You dare question me!?" It roared.

"Turn that insect out of court! Off with it's head!"

"How _dare_ you!" The caterpillar screeched, almost as booming as Lyzera. Even the Queen Regent looked a little unnerved; clearly no one had ever talked back to her in such a manner before. "I should drain the very magic from every single one of you - every last drop!" With a sniff, he wriggled back into the palms of the guard who had brought him in. Varg made an irritated gesture and the guard quickly removed the offending caterpillar from the room.

"Next witness, page!"

"Next witness!" Jathro scanned down the list on his parchment. "Lexi!"

Lexi rose from her seat, and settled herself into the witness booth. Varg looked down at her - how very like him, she thought.

"What do you know of this crime, girl?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing at all."

"That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet..." Varg sounded almost thoughtful, before he turned, eyes steeled, and roared at the members of the jury. "Write. That. _Down_!"

"Um, _un_important, your excellency means, of course," Jathro timidly corrected, waiting for Varg to scream at him in reply.

"_Un_important," Varg repeated sulkily. "Of course. Important - unimportant - important - unimportant..."

"Aha!" Lyzera interrupted his mumblings, rising so quickly that she knocked her throne to the ground. She pointed a finger towards the back of the room, trembling violently with rage. "_Him_. He sang at my last concert! _He murdered Time!_"

Lexi's gaze followed the direction of her finger; Tom and Benny were still in the room, huddled in the shadows at the back. Benny had gone deathly pale, his face nauseated. Tom was simply drinking his tea, appearing calm; if Lexi didn't know him as well as she did, she would have missed the tense position of his shoulders and the squareness of his jaw: the only signs that he was on edge.

"Off with his head!" Benny gave a shriek at her sentence. Tom's brow furrowed.

"You cannot be doing that!" He protested.

"I shall be doing whatever I like!" Lyzera snapped.

"You shan't!" Tom gripped his tea cup. "You shall not be making us late for _tea!_" He hurled the cup away from him; it clipped one of the unsuspecting guards on the shoulder. Lyzera's eyes blazed.

"Kill them!" She screeched. "_Both_ of them!"

"No!" Panic jolted through Lexi's body. She needed to do something, anything...Her fingers enclosed around something in her pocket. The mushroom pieces.

"No!?" Lyzera had fixed on her. "Off with her -" She was cut off as Lexi, chewing both slices of the mushroom, shot towards the ceiling, her head colliding with it, causing an uproar amongst the crowd. No one seemed to notice or care about Tom and Benny taking the opportunity to slip out of the room, apart from her. She sighed in relief, hoping that they could run fast enough to get away.

"Silence!" Jathro was trying to control the court.

"Rule forty two!" Varg was glowering up at her. "_All persons more than a mile high must leave the court __immediately__!_"

"I am _not_ a mile high!" Her voice echoed off the walls.

"You are," Jathro cut in.

"Nearly two miles, I would say," Lyzera added. She didn't sound so formidable now that there was someone with a louder voice than her.

"Well, I shall not leave, anyhow." Lexi folded her arms.

"It be the oldest rule in the court!" Jathro insisted.

"Then, it should be rule one!"

"Page!" Varg's eyes didn't leave the giant form that had suddenly appeared in his court. "Make a royal decree. Rule forty two should be rule one!"

"Prepare for your sentence, Knave!"

"There still hasn't been a verdict!" Lexi cried indignantly.

"Hold your tongue!" Lyzera didn't look so confident as she had done a few minutes ago.

"I won't!" Lexi replied. "I will not be told what to do by the likes of you! I was - no, I _am_ \- a princess of Nekron, and I do not answer to bad-tempered tyrants like you...!" She trailed off. The ceiling was sliding away from her, and she was shrinking back down to her previous size. The power-hungry look returned to Lyzera's eyes by the second as Lexi shrunk inch by inch. There was a second-long pause when Lexi had reached her small size, before -

"Off with her head!"

The entire procession of guards descended upon Lexi, like a fox chasing it's prey; Lexi gave a shriek and battered her way past, kicking and shoving where it was necessary and barrelling through the court door, finding herself in amongst a maze of corridors. She set off down the hall to her left, turning down corner after corner, running around in circles, setting herself dizzy, the army of Lyzera's guards hot on her heels. She felt just as lost, just as disorientated as she had done running around the palace of Nekron as a small child. Only there was nothing funny or childlike about this situation. Her head was on the line this time.

Skidding across the marble floor, Lexi forced her way out of the palace gates and tore down the steps towards the grounds. Her dress scraped and caught on the many bushes lining the grassy path, the twigs becoming claw-like fingers that ripped and clung to the fabric of her skirt. A large hole was now embedded in the blue material, but there were more pressing matters on Lexi's mind. Such as running for her life.

Beyond the four walls that surrounded the royal palace, through a gate that was hidden under strands of ivy that clung to the rusting metal, there stretched a cavernous forest, similar to the one that she had wandered in hours before. Diving through the gate, Lexi plunged through the trees, stumbling over roots and rocks, scraping her hands and knees, falling down but scrambling back up in an instant. She could hear the sounds of the guards thundering in her ears as she ducked around a corner and paused for a moment, leaning against what appeared to be two large rocks jutting out of the ground, out of breath, her chest rising and falling unevenly. She was about to carry on her escape - the guards were mere metres behind her, after all - when a hand enclosed around her wrist and around her mouth, cutting off her yelp, dragging her backwards, through a gap in the stones, dropping her down into some sort of small chasm, hidden out of sight by the guards. Despite the burn in her muscles, Lexi tried to wrestle out of the strong grip.

"Fair one!" Tom's voice came from behind her. "Lexi! Stop! It only be us!" He dropped his hold on her.

Lexi shook her head slowly, trying to clear it, trying to slow her racing heart. "Did you...Why did you do that?"

"Well." Tom winked at her. "I couldn't let one as fair as you face a beheading, could I?"

It was so simple a statement, and yet Lexi's eyes filled with tired, weary tears that fell down her cheeks silently.

"Now, now, none of that." His fingers reached out and gently wiped the beads of moisture away. "We be having none of that. What is wrong?"

"I miss you."

"I be right here -"

"No," she interrupted, sparking more tears. "I mean, I miss _him_. I miss Tom. I don't care whether he left me all alone with nothing and no one to depend on. He gave me _life_. He gave me my _freedom_. I don't care how angry I am at him for not taking responsibility or not being there for me; that doesn't change how I feel about him, or any of it." She couldn't be angry at him. Not anymore. She didn't think she had it in her. She sniffled. "I need to go _home_." Her voice was getting towards a desperate wail. "I need to get home to my son. I need to get away from here - I need to leave this place!"

"Oh, Lexi." He leaned over and gently pressed a kiss to her temple. "That be impossible. For, you see, you cannot leave when you were never here in the first place."


	11. Epilogue: Home

"Mum!"

Lexi gasped, sitting bolt upright, her head spinning, words tumbling from her mouth.

"Queen...Headless...Tom... What?" She glanced around herself. "Is this...Am I home?"

Yes. She was. She was home! There was the large cracked mirror above the empty fireplace that reflected her flustered appearance, the tiny black and white television that only got five channels and only at certain points during the day; here was the small coffee table, the lumpy leather sofa...the damp lumpy leather sofa?

Lexi glanced down at her blue dress. Stone cold tea covered her lap, stomach, the sofa and the carpet; the china cup lay on the floor too, in the middle of a puddle of tea. No wonder the Unpossible race had not dried her completely.

Benny Junior stood in front of her, a curious expression on his youthful face. His confusion only deepened when his mother broke out into hysterical laughter.

"Mum?"

"Home!" Lexi's voice was joyous as she threw her arms around her son and pulled him into a warm, albeit damp, hug. "I'm home! Thank goodness, I'm _home!_"

"Did you go somewhere?" Benny asked, voice muffled slightly by his mother's shoulder.

"Not exactly," she replied, breaking her grip on him. "But, my goodness, I had the most peculiar dream! A dream fit for a Mad Hatter." The image of Hat Maker Tom flashed before her eyes. She sighed suddenly; it felt like she'd lost him all over again. Which was ridiculous. Such a ridiculous thing that it belonged with all of the inhabitants of her Wonderland.

"Mummy!"

"Hm? Oh. Sorry, Benny." Lexi pecked him on the forehead. "I was thinking about my dream. What were you saying?"

"I was saying that I had a strange dream too!"

Lexi frowned. "Were you in Wonderland?"

"No. Not exactly. We were in the countryside and we had our own house; I was sitting at a really long table eating a funny bread with fruit in it and then you came out of the house dressed like Alice - you know, out of the story? You brought me a cup of tea in a green tea cup and when I tried to drink out of it, it started singing to me!"

"Really? What did it start singing?"

"I can't remember exactly. It was something about a bird." He beamed. "You kept scolding it - you said that tea cups were for drinking out of, not for serenading people."

"That sounds a lot like something I would say," Lexi agreed with a smile. How uncanny it was, the similarities between her dream and the dream of her son.

"So, what was your dream about, Mum?"

"Oh, a lot of things. I can't remember a lot of the finer details, but it was very bizarre."

Benny clambered into her lap, ignoring the tea stains. "Can I hear about it? Please?"

"Well, alright. There was a scarlet rabbit with an umbrella. A wonderful man who made hats. A rude Queen Regent. A little pink mouse that looked like a hobgoblin. A grumpy scaly orange caterpillar. A smiling cat with spectacles."

"I didn't know cats could smile, Mum."

"Neither did I, Benny." She ruffled his hair. "Hey, what time is it?"

"I don't know. Seven o'clock, I think. It's a school day," he reminded her.

"Right." Lexi pushed her unruly hair from her eyes. "How does a bit of breakfast before school sound? Toast?" Benny nodded, jumping from her lap, hurrying on through to the kitchen. Lexi watched him go with a smile on her face, and was about to follow him when she noticed the tattered copy of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, still resting on the coffee table. She picked it up and turned it over and over in her hands, several things flashing through her head at once.

She thought of Benny Junior, and the life that she faced living with him until he was old enough to make his own way in the world. She thought of how worried she always was of how well she could provide for him, and how she sometimes felt like she wasn't good enough for the task, but then she'd see her son's happy smile and warm eyes and the healthy flush in his cheeks, and somehow, that made all those nasty little doubts vanish from the front of her mind. For a while, at least.

She thought of her own life, and Tom's life, and the life she faced in terms of living alone without him. She thought of how much she had done by herself, and how far she'd come since the bratty, overlooked princess who watched wizard after wizard being taken, uncomfortable, but not strong enough to say anything. She thought of how that bratty princess was still a part of her, and how it often made an appearance when she wasn't expecting it, and how this was a good thing. In order to move forward, she had to remember the struggle, and this applied to her relationship with Tom too. She had to get past her anger towards him in order to move forward. She would be sad, she would be lonely, she would grieve over being without him, but how else was she supposed to grow and mature if she ran away from all of those things?

She thought of Wonderland also. Her Wonderland. That's what it had been. She closed her eyes briefly and, despite the stresses of everyday life moving in and taking the place of the finer details of that mad world, she thought of all the strange and mystical creatures who lived there. Maybe the cat had been right. Maybe one did just come to a point where one just accepted the way things were and learned to live with them. If she was mad, then, so be it. She wouldn't change being mad. Being mad was something that kept her human.

She rose from her seat on the sofa and placed the little book back on the coffee table with a sigh and a rolling of her eyes.

Maybe she should enquire after the sequel.

**The End.**

* * *

**Yay! Lexi survived her trip into Wonderland, and came back a little bit wiser and a whole lot more philosophical. Thank you so much to the people who read this/reviewed this/followed this - you are all as wonderful as Wonderland itself, and I love you all! :) X**


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